A Saint Louis University study reveals that more than 25 percent of St. Louis area Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) do not get vaccinated against the flu.
Published in the American Journal of Infection Control, the study indicates that the seasonal influenza vaccine compliance for St. Louis EMTs still remains far below the 90 percent target outlined by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Healthy People 2020 program…

…The study, funded by the Saint Louis County Department of Health, gauged the seasonal and H1N1 influenza vaccine compliance and whether or not St. Louis EMTs planned to get vaccinated. It also measured the attitudes and beliefs of EMTs about the seasonal influenza vaccine. Sixty percent of EMTs who did not get vaccinated said they do not trust the public health authorities when they say the influenza vaccine is safe, and about a third said that flu vaccine has a lot of side effects and reported being afraid of them. More than half in this group also said they do not believe they can play a role in transmitting influenza to their patients if they are not vaccinated.

There are a few points from this that are very worrying indeed. I don’t think it would be speculating too wildly to think that you could generalise from this study to other regions, and nations. EMTs are on the front line and as such interact with more patients than nearly any other health professional, especially the elderly who are most at risk from influenza. For health professionals the flu vaccine is not just to protect the immunised, but also to protect the people they come into contact with. Previous studies have shown that at risk groups like the elderly are not nearly as likely to receive the flu vaccine than is necessary, which means the will be depending on the vaccination status of others to prevent catching the flu, which can be fatal. Which is why it’s all the more important that healthcare professionals get the vaccinations they require, vaccines like the flu and whooping cough boosters.
What is more surprising to me is the distrust that 60% of the non-vaccinated have for their own profession. It really demonstrates the up-hill battle we are facing as skeptics and activists to prove that modern medical establishments aren’t part of some money making conspiracy, with peoples lives caught in the middle. The fact of the matter is that pharmaceutical companies are already hesitant to produce vaccine due to the risk of legal action over vaccine injury, vaccines aren’t hugely profitable either.
Perhaps the most disappointing finding though is the clear lack of education that lead more than half of the non-vaccinated to believe that they were not capable of transmitting the flu to their patients. Working in the health industry myself I have all too often been witness to shocking gaps in what should be common knowledge to any health professional, especially in matter where patients lives are literally on the line. Clearly more resources are needed to keep members of our healthcare systems up to date.

Last night around midnight our friend Mike Lacelle passed away. We will be talking about him on the next show and his silent contributions to skepticism.

The sad news came last week that friend and contributor to the podcast Skeptics Guide to the Universe Mike Lacelle passed away. This is the second death to rock the show after the great Perry DeAngelis passed away several years ago. Mike was an enthusiastic fan of the show creating the SGU fan site as well as countless hours of behind the scenes contributions to skepticism’s most popular podcast; The Skeptics Guide to the Universe. His work ethic was a real inspiration to me, he showed that we can all make a difference, even if we don’t get the glory we feel we might deserve. Condolences to Mike’s family and friends, he will be missed but not forgotten.

The journal Pediatrics recently published a study about complementary and alternative medicine use in paediatric patients with autism with some interesting results. 28% of the 3173 patients sample reported use of CAM therapies. For all the publicity CAM gets, especially with autism this result is actually surprisingly low, though admittedly still too high. There was a correlation between increasing severity of disease and increased likelihood to use CAM therapies. There was also a correlation between increased wealth and increased likelihood to use CAM. This is not really that surprising, I would speculate that the more severe the disease, the more distressing for the parents and therefore the more likely the parents would be to seek alternative therapies and wealthier parents are more likely to be able to afford the sometimes expensive CAM treatments.

In the good news category Chelation therapy, a dangerous and thoroughly unsupported treatment according to the evidence was reported by only 0.6% of the 3173 respondents, this is down from as much as 7% in previous studies. Perhaps all the work of skeptics and scientists has been paying off when it comes to these kinds of treatments?

For more information the original article is available in full for free and doesn’t contain too much scientific jargon.

This week on Sciencism: Critical Eye, Ross Balch is joined by Dan Abrahmsen to discuss manslaughter for pseudoscience, logical fallacies in alternative medicine, Billy Ray Cirus spots a “UFO”, the weaknesses of prophecies and the Australian tv show “The One” including the vagueness of psychic “impressions”. We also discuss the skeptics toolkit by explaining some of the most common logical fallacies used in pseudoscience.